The Complete Garden Design Course - 3. How To Design
What you'll learn
- Master all the essential skills and techniques of designing gardens used by professional garden designers and landscape architects
- Follow step by step design demonstrations from empty bare garden plots to finished illustrated designs filmed from above a drawing board
- Undertake in your own time 13 design exercises supported by download resources
- Create your own designs for six different gardens of varying size, shape and complexity in different design styles, using supplied base plans
- Learn how to critically assess your own design work to achieve the best results
- Learn all the important design considerations needed to create original and attractive gardens and how to find inspiration for your designs
Requirements
- No pre-existing skills are needed for this course.
- However it would be useful to have learnt the techniques taught in the first two courses in this series on Design Principles and Drawing Techniques before starting this course.
- A list of drawing equipment needed to complete the design exercises is provided at start of Section 2 of the course.
Description
The primary aim of this course is to give you a thorough grounding in the techniques of how to approach the design of a garden, progressing through all the stages from the outline of an empty garden plot right up to a fully illustrated garden design.
I strongly believe that the most effective way of teaching garden design skills is to involve students in designing for themselves right from the start. So, with this in mind, I have designed 13 exercises where you can pause the presentation of the course and work through each exercise in your own time supported by download resources
In six of these exercises, gardens of varying size, shape, style and complexity are introduced. This is followed by demonstrations, filmed from above a drawing board, of all the stages in the design of each garden. You will then be able to create your own designs for these gardens using the supplied base plans.
The presentation of this course includes more than 70 slides to accompany a commentary on how to design, and these slides combine examples of garden design projects, images, sketches, photos, plans and diagrams. Each slide will also include bullet points summarising the main points of my commentary, and these bullet points can be a useful reminder if you need to look back over the main features of the course.
The final sections of the course summarise the important design considerations needed to create original and attractive gardens, and demonstrate how to find and record inspiration for your designs.
This course has been written for anyone who wants to learn the skills and techniques of how to design original and beautiful gardens. You may be someone who wants to know how to design your own garden, or someone who is interested in starting a career in garden design, or a student studying garden design. Or you may be working as a gardener, a garden contractor, a garden designer or a landscape architect.
For all these people and anyone simply interested in garden design, this course progresses from the essential baseline skills, to more advanced techniques which will be demonstrated in the design of gardens of increasing complexity
This course is the third in this series of four courses under the heading of ‘The Complete Garden Design Course’. Taken together these four courses will give you a thorough grounding in the art of garden design so that by the end you will have learnt all the skills you will need to undertake your own garden design projects. However, while this course on How to Design often refers back the earlier two courses, it can also be studied as a stand-alone course. A list of drawing equipment introduced in the earlier Drawing Techniques course and which will be needed to complete the design exercises is provided at start of Section 2 of the course.
Who this course is for:
- This course has been written for anyone who wants to learn the skills and techniques of how to design original and beautiful gardens.
Instructor
- 4.4 Instructor Rating
- 458 Reviews
- 1,791 Students
- 4 Courses
Hi, my name is Henry Mead and I have been working as a garden and landscape designer for the past 40 years. After leaving school I worked as gardener for a couple of years and then enrolled on the MA course in landscape design at the University of Sheffield in the UK. I then worked in a number of landscape design offices in the UK and the US before taking my professional exams and becoming a chartered member of the Landscape Institute, the professional body of landscape architects in the UK.
By this time my wife and I and our two children had settled in south London. Next, I joined the team of landscape architects in the UK’s largest architectural firm based in London where I led landscape design teams working on a range of commissions many of which were honoured with national design awards. During this time I was fortunate enough to design a wide variety of gardens and open spaces in the UK and overseas. These included the redevelopment of the grounds of the Wimbledon tennis tournament, public parks in China, healing gardens for new hospital developments, private gardens, courtyards, roof gardens, winter gardens, playgrounds and sports grounds, wildlife gardens, school grounds and university campuses, water features, community gardens, public squares, plazas and streetscapes.
In addition to my professional work, for many years I have been tutoring graduates to prepare them for their professional exams to qualify as chartered landscape architects.
In recent years I have been concentrating on the design of private gardens and I am thoroughly enjoying the experience working collaboratively with private clients and becoming more closely involved in the details of design.
Alongside my work as a designer, I have become increasingly interested in the potential of teaching garden design as an on-line course, as a convenient and flexible option for individuals who may not be able to afford the expense or time to study full-time. This has led me to create this series of courses on garden design which draw upon the skills that I have learnt during my career.
My wife and I like to travel whenever we can, sometimes on our cycles, which we combine with visiting gardens in the UK and abroad. I also spend much of my time keeping up to date with the latest film releases, exploring London and on the never-ending task of designing and redesigning on my own garden.